Data decays. That nice accurate database at the root of your CRM system will inevitably become corrupt and inaccurate over time. Incorrect entries are made, customers drop off, people change jobs or leave, and companies merge or go out of business. Slowly but surely your database becomes dirty, costing your people time and effort and your company lost opportunities.

To remain useful, your data file needs to be cleaned regularly to eliminate errors, duplication and outdated information. Ideally you do this as part of day to day operations. Less, ideally, your database can be scanned on a schedule and cleaned up at intervals.

But whether you do it on an ongoing or scheduled basis your lists of names, addresses, contacts, contact history and such need to be reviewed and corrected if your database is to remain at top efficiency.

The most straightforward way to do this is to have your people make corrections on the fly. Whenever they find an incorrect address, an obsolete listing or other error they correct it as they go.

This may be straightforward but it isn't likely to be popular. This technique takes away from your salesforce' main job and interrupts their flow of work. It's better to schedule daily updates when your people can concentrate on cleaning up the data.

Daily updates are preferable to weekly or monthly updates because there is less chance for the incorrect data to be forgotten.

Pay special attention to people's names and company contact information. It's embarrassing to call a customer and ask for someone who left the company weeks ago. It doesn't get the sales call off to a good start. By the same token having a company name or address wrong makes an obvious bad impression as well.

You also need to eliminate duplicate entries, especially if your CRM system attaches the contact history with the client to the entry. If not corrected, this can lead to a system where you have two or more parallel and incompatible contact histories in your CRM database for the same company. This is confusing for everybody and does not make a good impression on the client.

This is a job that can be greatly aided by software. Some CRM packages come with a built-in deduplication feature which scans the database for similar or duplicate entries and flags them for possible combination. There are also third-party software packages available that can do the job.

You don't want something that automatically eliminates any entry it sees as a duplicate. Some of those “duplicates” may not be duplicates at all and the contact histories may need to be saved and combined.

The final stage in the process is to review the structure of your database at regular interviews and revise as needed. One common problem is asking the sales person to enter too much information in too many fields. It undoubtedly seemed like a good idea when the database was set up, but has it justified itself in practice? A lot of times it hasn't and it simply means extra work for the sales force.

It's important to make sure that the entries in the database serve the company as efficiency as possible. This means, among other things, storing the information that's needed and not cluttering up the entry with information of limited use.

However it's important to make sure that the information you want to eliminate isn't needed by someone. Be sure to check.

Data cleaning is one of those gritty unglamorous jobs that needs to be done regularly to keep your CRM system running at top efficiency. It may not be sexy, but don't neglect it.

About the Author

Rick Cook has been involved with computers since the days of punched cards and magnetic drum memories. He has written hundreds of articles on computers and related technology as well as a series of fantasy novels full of bad computer jokes.